


Inhabited

by blacklid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 06, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-17
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 05:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacklid/pseuds/blacklid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inhabited

**Author's Note:**

> Speculative coda to 5.22, _Swan Song_.

_Rise and shine, Sammy._

Dean's voice.

There were windows in the sky, dark and full of stars.

The dark was above him now instead of below. No wind rushing at his back. Only the soft touch of leather. Familiar and old, old and long ago.

The stars didn't move.

Sam blinked and leaned up on his elbows. The sound of Dean's voice had come from the front seat, where it always was, where it was always supposed to be, where it wasn't now. He was sure he'd heard it.

He was sure of nothing. _What time is it?_ he thought to himself, then squinted. He didn't know what day it was. What year.

 _The time is now,_ came a reply from the silence.

He shifted to sit up. Dirt tumbled from inside his pants legs and earth-rattled onto the floor of the car.

It was strange, how the stars didn't move. It was strange how his hands felt, squeezing the top of the bench seat in front of him. If he squeezed it hard enough, it would tell him if this was real. It was probably strange that he couldn't remember how he got here, or when, or why. It was strange how he didn't seem to care about any of that. He let the thought drop and shatter on the surface of the air.

The car was empty with him in it.

Everything was still. The shadows never moved. The night never moved. The sky never turned. The world didn't spin. Not here. Not this close.

He opened the door. The door moved. He wasn't sure if it was a cause or an effect.

Silent houses on a silent street where the light never moved and the earth never moved and the car had come to a sudden stop only now, only a few minutes ago, only right before he'd awoken; a passenger on a ship that never sailed and had no port.

The street lamp at the corner of a house a few feet away shifted red, bright but unpenetrative. He got out of the car, movement, and shut the door, movement, and his body took one step, then two. The world blurred around the frozen landscape inside, the roundness of steel that transmits the energy of motion from one end to the other, yet never moves.

The light exploded as it reached him. _The halo effect of a cognitive bias whereby the perception of a particular trait is influenced by the perception of the former traits in a sequence of interpretations._

He looked forward, into the future before his eyes, watched the movement inside the windows without stars or shifting light.

A man sat at a table. A family sat at a table. It might have been happening now. It might have happened before, when he existed before, before he existed now, a shadow in the unmaking.

He expected the vision to die as he watched. 

It didn't change.

 _Rise and shine, Sammy._

 _You first, Dean._

 _  
..._


End file.
